Metamorphosis
I’ve known for most of my life that I’m more sensitive than others. I quickly determined that I would have to hide it as well as I could to achieve the “ideal man” status. So I’ve lived most of my life in this masked realm, pretending I’m a lot tougher and more callous than I am naturally. And then I was a teenager in the 90’s when the coolest thing ever was to act like you don’t care about anything, furthering my calculated aloofness.
It wasn’t until my late 20’s that I began to realize that I had been repressing a more feminine side of myself, and that there is nothing wrong with expressing it. So I had made this shell for myself and only just begun to discover what truly lies within. And what I discovered there is a much more dynamic creature than I had been putting on.
The dot that I neglected to connect is that being highly sensitive is something to identify by. I’m a lot of things, why should I identify by this one trait? And, I think that’s the thing that Sheri drove home to me in her exploration of the HSP world, is that it is significant!
Being an HSP is a real distinguishing factor between us and the rest of the world. It’s something I’ve tried to downplay most of my life, but it’s not a weakness, it doesn’t make me lesser than, it might actually be my greatest strength. It allows me to connect with people on a more intimate level, I can FEEL their feelings much of the time. That can be overwhelming, especially if you don’t know what you’re dealing with. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’m feeling a certain way because I picked it up off of someone else, or if I genuinely feel that way.
Sometimes I wish I WAS more callous and tough and impenetrable, so that others’ rampant feelings couldn’t run me over. But if you’re aware you’re HSP, that you’re different, that you can’t have the same approach as many other people and hope to prosper, it can quickly turn from a hopeless burden into a priceless advantage. It feels like the world was not built to cater to our kind, but by making some adjustments we can all learn to flourish and thrive together.
Peace and good night.